Читать книгу Vegetable Teratology - Maxwell T. Masters - Страница 25

Real or apparent displacement of organs from their usual position is an almost necessary consequence of, or is, at least, coexistent with a large number of teratological phenomena. It is obvious that abnormal unions or disunions, suppressions, hypertrophies, &c., are very liable to bring about or to be accompanied with changes in the position, either of the parts directly affected or of adjoining organs.

In this place, then, it is merely necessary to allude to some of the more important displacements, and to refer for further details to the sections relating to those irregularities of growth on which the displacement depends.

Displacement of bulbs.—I owe to the kindness of Mr. James Salter a tulip bulb which had been dug up after flowering, and from the base of which were suspended several small bulbs; and I have since seen another specimen showing the same unusual arrangement. The explanation of these formations seems to be that they correspond to the bulbils ordinarily found in the axils of the scales of the parent organ, and which, in some way or another, have been displaced and thrust into the ground. Professor de Vriese figures something of the same kind in Ixia carminosa.[90]

Of somewhat different nature to those above described was an anomaly described by M. Gay at a meeting of the Botanical Society of France, April 8th, 1859. The plant affected was Leucoium æstivum, and the changes observed were apparently attributable to a simple separation of two leaves that are usually contiguous. "Suppose," says M. Gay in describing this malformation, "the first leaf of the terminal bud separated by a long internode from the other leaves, which remain closely packed; and further, suppose an evident thickening of the upper portion of the lengthened internode, and there will be not only a single bulb, bearing with the leaves of the present year all the remnants of the leaves of the two preceding years, but two bulbs placed one above another, on the same axis, separated by the length of the internode."